The Revolutionary Socialists are the (UK) SWP’s associated group in Egypt, but take a much more critical view of the Muslim Brotherhood (although, perhaps under pressure from the the SWP, they did call for a vote for Morsi and the Brotherhood in last year’s elections).

Here’s their statement on today’s massacre:

Down with military rule! Down with Al-Sisi, the leader of the counter-revolution!

The bloody dissolution of the sit-ins in Al-Nahda Square and Raba’a al-Adawiyya is nothing but a massacre—prepared in advance. It aims to liquidate the Muslim Brotherhood. But, it is also part of a plan to liquidate the Egyptian Revolution and restore the military-police state of the Mubarak regime.

The Revolutionary Socialists did not defend the regime of Mohamed Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood for a single day. We were always in the front ranks of the opposition to that criminal, failed regime which betrayed the goals of the Egyptian Revolution. It even protected the pillars of the Mubarak regime and its security apparatus, armed forces and corrupt businessmen. We strongly participated in the revolutionary wave of 30 June.

Neither did we defend for a single day the sit-ins by the Brotherhood and their attempts to return Mursi to power.

But we have to put the events of today in their context, which is the use of the military to smash up workers’ strikes. We also see the appointment of new provincial governors—largely drawn from the ranks of the remnants of the old regime, the police and military generals. Then there are the policies of General Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi’s government. It has adopted a road-map clearly hostile to the goals and demands of the Egyptian revolution, which are freedom, dignity and social justice.

This is the context for the brutal massacre which the army and police are committing. It is a bloody dress rehearsal for the liquidation of the Egyptian Revolution. It aims to break the revolutionary will of all Egyptians who are claiming their rights, whether workers, poor, or revolutionary youth, by creating a state of terror.

However, the reaction by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in attacking Christians and their churches, is a sectarian crime which only serves the forces of counter-revolution. The filthy attempt to create a civil war, in which Egyptian Christians will fall victims to the reactionary Muslim Brotherhood, is one in which Mubarak’s state and Al-Sisi are complicit, who have never for a single day defended the Copts and their churches.

We stand firmly against Al-Sisi’s massacres, and against his ugly attempt to abort the Egyptian Revolution. For today’s massacre is the first step in the road towards counter-revolution. We stand with the same firmness against all assaults on Egypt’s Christians and against the sectarian campaign which only serves the interests of Al-Sisi and his bloody project.

Many who described themselves as liberals and leftists have betrayed the Egyptian Revolution, led by those who took part in Al-Sisi’s government. They have sold the blood of the martyrs to whitewash the military and the counter-revolution. These people have blood on their hands.

We, the Revolutionary Socialists, will never deviate for an instant from the path of the Egyptian Revolution. We will never compromise on the rights of the revolutionary martyrs and their pure blood: those who fell confronting Mubarak, those who fell confronting the Military Council, those who fell confronting Mursi’s regime, and those who fall now confronting Al-Sisi and his dogs.

Down with military rule! No the return of the old regime! No to the return of the Brotherhood! All power and wealth to the people

In the 2011-12 Egyptian Parliamentary election the nearest thing to a left party to get anything resembling mass support was The Revolution Continues alliance which got 3.4% support in the first round but dwindled to 1.5% in the second round after it arranged to swap support with centrist secularist rivals.

AFAICT from the summary results published in English the far left were not represented at all even though a ludicrous number of parties (IIRC 50) stood.

But 66% of Egyptians did freely vote for the Muslim Brotherhood and its even more fanatical Salafist rivals.

And it seems the poorer and more working class the area the more Islamist it voted.

That is the only political fact that matters – even bourgeois democracy in Egypt seems a utopian dream as the masses will simply vote it away by giving power to theocratic fanatics.

So every pronouncement of local Marxists however heroic they may be is quite literally tragic as the people they appeal to clearly prefer the lunatic ravings of long dead prophets to their own class interest as workers.

Max Planck allegedly said that civilisation only advances one funeral at a time and I can’t imagine how many millions of funerals and how many more generations will be required to allow Egypt to advance even into the age of bourgeois democracy,

Today the “revolution” that really never was, is over. Egyptians will go to sleep tonight under a curfew and wake tomorrow under the hated Emergency Law that places the country under military rule. The government claims the measure is temporary — only for a month — but given Egypt’s current circumstances that is not likely to be the case. Supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsy have stepped up their mindless campaign against Egyptian Copts and the violent repression of the opposition sit-ins will likely lead to even more radicalization. How long before the Muslim Brotherhood seeks redress through the force of arms? Spokesmen for the interim government argue that they have extended a hand to the Brothers to join the transition, but that they rejected it. Of course they did.

Not only was it a good political strategy to stay in the streets and discredit a political process born of a coup, but clearly, if the Brotherhood understood anything, they knew that the post-July 3 calls for “inclusion” in an interim government were not serious. They themselves had made similar insincere appeals for dialogue and inclusion of their opponents all the while working to institutionalize the Brotherhood’s power in a new political system. This is why they rammed through a contested draft constitution last December and the Brotherhood-dominated Shura Council attempted to write an electoral law that favored its aims.

Just as Egypt’s political system before the January 25 uprising was rigged in favor of Mubarak and his constituents, the Brothers sought to stack the new order in their favor, and today’s winners will build a political system that reflects their interests. This is neither surprising nor sui generis. In the United States, rules, regulations, and laws are a function of the powerful, too. But in America, the capacity for change exists; whereas in Egypt, those institutions are absent. Although virtually all political actors have leveraged the language of political reform and espoused liberal ideas, they have nevertheless sought to wield power through exclusion. This has created an environment in which the losers do not process their grievances through elections, parliamentary debate, consensus-building, and compromise — but through military intervention and street protests. This plays into the hands of those powerful groups embedded within the state who have worked to restore the old order almost from the time that Hosni Mubarak stepped down into ignominy two and a half years ago.

The roots of this desultory state of affairs are found in none other than Tahrir Square of January and February 2011. The elements of Egypt’s tribulations were all there even as hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were thundering in unison “Dignity and freedom are the demands of all Egyptians!”: The leaderless instigators who brooked no question nor critique; the soccer thugs who served as the shock troops of the revolution; a military seeking to preserve its position in the post-Mubarak order; groups advancing liberal ideas in the service of non-democratic agendas; and the callous, brazen sexual assaults.

The pathologies that seeped out of Tahrir produced strains in Egypt’s revolutionary promise from the start. The ardor of late January and February remained, but the sense of common purpose was lost in the seemingly endless Friday demonstrations, unrest in the labor sector, doctors’ strikes, lawyers’ strikes, demands for revolutionary justice, and sectarian violence — all of which distracted everyone from the important work of building on the uprising to establish effective political organization with appealing, inclusive messages. Yet, across the political spectrum, leaders defaulted to their traditional corners rather than confront the sheer complexity of Egypt’s political, social, and economic problems. Narrow interests triumphed at the expense of what was best for Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood claimed it was perfectly suited for the post-Mubarak moment. Its spokespeople and sympathizers claimed that it was a progressive force for democratic change, but it quickly emulated the ways and worldview of Mubarak’s National Democratic Party. The Brothers were in charge, but it was still Mubarak’s Egypt: whoever ruled could do so without regard to anyone who might disagree.

Under the Brothers it was not, “one man, one vote, one time” as Islamophobes liked to warn, but rather the imposition of an electoral system that sought to make it “one man, one vote, every time.” Meanwhile, the Brotherhood’s adversaries, both secular/civil forces and the remnants of the regime, pursued parallel strategies to achieve what they could not at the ballot boxes in late 2011 and 2012. At least the Tamarod campaign, which crystallized in the spring of this year, sought to situate its efforts in the constitution, which (at least in theory) provided for a referendum on the presidency. But when it became clear that Morsy had no intention of putting his performance to the test, a coup became the only viable option. This dovetailed with the counter-revolutionaries who sought a military intervention to restore the rightful order of Egyptian politics and put an end to what they clearly regarded as the aberration of the last 30 months.

The fact that the Brothers and their opponents offer a dizzying array of protests in the streets, or percentages of votes, to justify their actions as the “will of the Egyptian people” should confuse no one. The democratic aspirations and demands for the fall of the regime that were emblematic of Tahrir Square remain just that — seemingly distant ambitions that recent events have made unrealistic.

With Morsy’s departure, many Egyptians and observers have recently declared, “There is no going back.” This confidence in Egypt’s democratic development once seemed like hopeful bravado; now it’s simply tragic.

jimmy glesgasaid,

The ballot box is for social progress for all and not religious nutter dictatorships.
Morsi fucked up because he is a hater of non muslims (and muslims that disagree with the Brotherhood).
He hates Israel and the West. He is now fucked and that is a good thing.